Bitcoin Scam App Approved by Apple Robs iPhone User of $600,000+

[Maximara]

What money?

Right. It's no different than having stock and it rising to insanely high level; until you cash out that "money" might as well not exist. Pump and dump scams still happen even with all the regulations in place. The most infamous one was back in the 1700s - the South Sea Company. Adjusted for inflation that makes Enron look like small potatoes.

 

[Maximara]

It was actually real money idiot, the app was fake. Learn to read

I would dispute that. It like buying stock and having it go up. That money isn't "real" until you cash out. This is why the IRS doesn't tax gains until you cash out - it doesn't mean jack until you can actually use the money. As Bitcoin Investor ‘Sick To My Stomach’ After Being Scammed Out Of $7,000 shows there are a lot of scams connected to Bitcoin.

 

[Maximara]

It is iOS devs that have to pay "30 percent". Devs are protected.

They only need to pay 30% if they make over $1 million. Otherwise it is 15%.

 

[strayts]

Annnnd that's one of the largest weaknesses to crypto.

 

[arvinsim]

It’s gone. He should have known by now that space is full of criminals criming.

Now imagine a phone with multiple app stores and this kind of scams and theft will happen on thousands of phones every day.

Victim blaming.

 

[MyopicPaideia]

Not defending Aple at all - my initial reaction was that Apple should actually be accountable for some damages here to the user given there relentless marketing campaign as to user safety on their platform.

Arguably the only reason the guy fell for the scam was because he was using an Apple device. If he had been on Android he probably would have been much more skeptical of anything he downloaded.

On the other hand, all it would have taken would have been a quick web search to see if Trezor had an iOS app.

 

[pearvsapple]

Aww no refund for losing fake money.

 

[Gudi]

When your tinder date asks you to invest in her bitcoin scheme, you better run! Which is what you should always do with anything related to bitcoin. By now all gangsters prefer to be paid in bitcoin. Who could resist a non-government controlled currency? It’s like announcing, this city has no police!

 

[WiseAJ]

Why? Because

App Store - Principles and Practices

The App Store is both a safe and trusted place for customers to discover and download apps, and a great business opportunity for all developers.

www.apple.com

It’s our store. And we take responsibility for it.

We believe that what’s in our store says a lot about who we are. We strongly support all points of view being represented on the App Store. But we also take steps to make sure apps are respectful to users with differing opinions, and reject apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line...

The five pillars of the guidelines — Safety, Performance, Business, Design, and Legal — require that apps offered on the App Store are safe, provide a good user experience, adhere to our rules on user privacy, secure devices from malware and threats, and use approved business models.



Or is all that just lip service?

See nothing in that which says they will compensate for user’s stupid mistakes

 

[macfacts]

They only need to pay 30% if they make over $1 million. Otherwise it is 15%.

Either way, iOS users don't pay anything for security, the devs do.

 

[strellson2020]

To me the case is not as crystal clear as some are stating.

1) Apple is advertising the apple app store as saver and more secure safe compared to Android stores (which it definitely is). However bringing the argument that this is similar to your mailbox and it’s your fault if you open up the wrong email is wrong in my eyes. Every person can send me an email instantaneously but for an app to appear in the apple app store it needs to go through a REVIEW and APPROVAL process. This to me should prevent any malicious apps to appear in the store otherwise the process does not work properly or the marketing message is wrong. -> in that particular case it just looks like to me apple did not it’s job properly. If i cannot trust the apps that i can download in the app store, what’s the point of having the limitations of having only one app store?


2) Android users are much more aware of scamming apps as anything can be downloaded from anywhere - there as a user you automatically are more careful before you download and use an app. It’s just a more “dangerous” space. You guard yourself less if you had made believe that you’re in a safe space (e.g. small town with no crime) than when you know you’re in an area that is well-known for being unsafe (e.g. town with massive drug cartel activity)

 

[MacBH928]

Apple is responsbile for a refund. It was their fault that they let the fake apps in. The consumer uses Apple services in expectations that they filter out and guarantee authenticity.

I don't know if Apple is stupid or not but they should have levels for app approval. Ex:

1-Games = any one
2-Data collecting = must be corporate with legal certification
3-Money = Real paper work and person-to-person meeting to sign agreement with Apple to let their app on the app store.

This is NOT GitHub.

 

[Ries]

I feel like Apple should be helping this person get their money back...

Why? They only test it is functional, not safe.

 

[Substance90]

Plot twist - the guy is actually the one who submitted the fake Trezor app to steal his own BTC to try and swindle Apple for some settlement.

 

[Black Magic]

*Apple only allows the App Store on iPhones*
Apple Defense Force: “Apple needs to do this to protect the user. If there were third party app stores allowed, scammers would run amok and take advantage of the average user!”

*App Store gets compromised and scammers scam a user*
Apple Defense Force: “It’s up to the user to know what they are downloading and to verify it beforehand. It’s not up to Apple to protect the user.”

How would Apple test this App? A tester would need to own that Bitcoin I’d assume to be able to test properly which we know won’t happen. Is it really reasonable for Apple to test every possible method in a App? Maybe they review the code for anything malicious which I’m sure there isn’t anything obvious outside of collecting credential.

shouldn’t the user at a minimum check the currency manufacturer’s website for app guidance? Is it really intelligent installing a random app because the icon looks familiar? Does a person that can be duped so easily over an icon really have access to $600,000? Sounds very suspect to me.

 

[UBS28]

It’s gone. He should have known by now that space is full of criminals criming.

Now imagine a phone with multiple app stores and this kind of scams and theft will happen on thousands of phones every day.

Better sell your computers running Mac OS X, Windows or Linux because else you get scammed without Apple acting as a gatekeeper charging 30% on everything.

 

[Stephen.R]

Apple is responsbile for a refund. It was their fault that they let the fake apps in.

The App was submitted to Apple as a "cryptography app" - and specifically declared that it was unrelated to "cryptocurrencies".

If Apple does spend weeks re-vetting every update to already published Apps: people complain the update process is too slow.

If Apple does not spend weeks re-vetting every update to already published Apps: people complain when bad-actors prey on stupid people.

 

[beanbaguk]

Real banks and financial institutions have protections in place to reduce the occurrence of these scams, or at the very least give a hope of getting the money back. With cryptocurrency there is no such hope.

This is another example of why cryptocurrency is a bad thing, on top of being bad for the environment.

If I were to provide an example of somebody who doesn't get cryptocurrency, this would be it.....

If you honestly believe people don't lose money using the "traditional" banking system, you live on cloud cuckoo land!

 

[beanbaguk]

People need to stop messing around with cryptocrap. it's such a plague causing all kinds of problems. Almost every scam/malware/ransomware uses a bitcoin address of sort

And before that, traditional banking. It exists on both platforms.

 

[gnasher729]

Honestly, it should be Apple's job to verify that a developer claiming to be company X is company X. Period. Full Stop. Same with Amazon and some of the crap happening on their ecommerce platform.

There is a company. One Russian and one Italian bloke living at the same address in London. Limited company with £100 share capital paid in. Same as my company except mine is genuine. Costs me £14 every year.

 

[m4mario]

Title should read, “Man buys fake currency with 600k of real money and gives password to fake app😂”

 

[TheOldChevy]

Security is paid by a participation to revenue, which is normal. So if I pay $3 for an app, part of it goes to security which covers the value of the app ($3). If I want security on the value of the data stored in the app, then I need to pay part of the value of the data (in this case, pay part of the $600,000) for security.... which not many people is ready to pay.

 

[gnasher729]

There was a guy who left his car keys in the car and called a locksmith to open the car, for $100. So the guy says “You see, this is a brand new Ferrari, worth $300,000, so if you make the slightest scratch on my car, it will lose $50,000 in value, and you’ll have to pay me $50,000”. Locksmith replies “I’m afraid you’ll have to walk home”.

Another guy booked a hotel room, then he complained that the $5,000,000 worth of diamonds in a little suitcase had disappeared from his room. And he wants the hotel to pay. So the hotel asks “did you tell us you would arrive with five million worth of diamonds? Did we accept responsibility? Because if you had, your room rate would have been $10,099 instead of $99, and we would have had armed guards inside and outside your room”.

 

[laz232]

Apart from the fact that you don't know what the purchase price was for the 17 bitcoins that he originally held

The fact that a person that has accrued $600,000 in wealth can be so easily duped by an icon leads me to wonder if this is a legit case or someone trying to get rich quick? At some point personal responsibility has to be considered here versus blaming everyone else for your poor decisions.

...

Of course. Or you could just trade money for food. I still think it’s pointless until it’s accepted for real people to pay their bills, buy food , etc.
Right now it’s a dork money that is making the rich richer and as I stated earlier it’s a really good way to make dirty money clean.

the vast majority of the planet barely know what it is. People come to the US for example and make loads of money and can take that money back to their countries and love like a king or queen. The US dollar is very much worth something to many parts of the world.

Yeah -because banks and "real" money is soooo clean:

HSBC moved vast sums of dirty money after paying record laundering fine - ICIJ

FinCEN Files probe reveals Europe’s biggest bank aided massive Ponzi scheme while on probation over ties to drug kingpins.

www.icij.org

These are BANKS that profit on the viscious drug trade in Mexico - they are literally money laundering...

In fact Bitcoin - due to the public ledger and the blockchain, is actually _fully_ traceable.

I use money, I have a few different currencies and and small amount of crypto.

"Right now it’s a dork money that is making the rich richer" & "money back to their countries and love like a king or queen. The US dollar is very much worth something to many parts of the world."
Alternatively: the petrodollar and the US hegemony on the financial system enforces corruption in those countries and acts as a colonial superpower (much as the French banking system still controls North Africa, or the Chinese the rest of Africa & southern Europe through their "belt and road" initiative). Now I don't worry about that because I don't have a cognitive dissonance regarding this fact, but then again I don't have a misplaced dogmatic belief that the US dollar is some virtuous store of value.

 

[gnasher729]

They only need to pay 30% if they make over $1 million. Otherwise it is 15%.

So one more scam, and they’ll have to pay 30% (I’m joking).